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BY 

WILLIAM E. BARTON, D. D., LL. D. 



Delivered before the Men's Bible Class of the 
First Congregational Church in Oak Park, 
on Nov. 17, 1918, the Sunday follow- 
ing the Signing of the Armistice. 



Published by 

THE MEN'S BIBLE CLASS 

First Congregational Church 

Oak Park, Illinois 

November, 1918 



3Forptuorb anb JnuUattnn 



The Men's Bible Class of the First Church presents this booklet 
with an invitation to all men in Oak Park who have no membership in 
an organization of this character, and who are interested in the applica- 
tion of Christian principles to the work of world-reconstruction, to join 
this class and participate in its discussions. The class is just beginning 
a new course of study under the inspiring leadership of Dr. F. B. Moore- 
head, whose high standing in his profession and notable service to his 
country are equalled by his zeal as a Bible student and his ability as 
a teacher. 

As introductory to this course of study, the Class invited Dr. Barton 
to deliver an address on the Sunday following the signing of the Armis- 
tice, outlining the essential problems of our country and the world in 
the period of reconstruction. Dr. Barton's address followed imme- 
diately after a sermon on "The Rebuilding of the World," in which he 
had treated the more definitely religious aspects of the subject. By 
request he has included in this pamphlet one or two paragraphs from 
his sermon, especially that relating to the Congress of Vienna, which 
seemed to suggest an instructive parallel and to be in direct line with 
this study. 

We commend this address to the thoughtful reading of those who 
shall receive it. In our judgment it is worthy of serious consideration. 
But the particular purpose of the Class in printing it, and one to which 
we wish to call special attention, is its use in suggesting themes for 
discussion and points of departure for the work of the Class. The 
address was not intended to indicate the order of discussion, but only 
to suggest the wide range of topics now calling for the serious attention 
of all men whose face is toward the dawn and who believe in the appli- 
cation of Christian principles to the problems of business, political 
organization and international relationship. To all such the invitation 
of this Bible Class is extended. 

The Class meets in its own room in the north end of the Church 
House each Sunday at five minutes after twelve o'clock. 

•**: j JOSEPH R. NOEL, President. 



Author 



c^^ of Watih S^tnorrarg 

By William E. Barton. 

In his suggestive book, "The Soul of America," Stanton Coit relates 
that he was leading a discussion in a group of boys in New York and 
was surprised to find how little idea they had of the worlds past. 
Addressing one of them, he asked, "When do you think this world was 
made?" The boy replied, "Wasn't it made in 1776?" The boy was not 
far from right. Two monumental events occurred in 1776. In that 
year the Declaration of Independence was written, and in the same 
year Adam Smith published his book entitled, "The Wealth of Nations. 
In that book he endeavored to relate political economy to natural theo- 
loo-y and to ethics. He succeeded at least in this that he set forth 
unmistakably the truth that commerce between either nations or indi- 
viduals must be mutually advantageous or it cannot be durable. No 
man can trade permanently with another man who invariably loses 
money by the transactions, for he will ultimately have nothing with 
which to trade. No nation can engage permanently in commerce with 
another nation unless the relation is mutually advantageous. This sim- 
ple principle came nearer to revolutionizing political economy than any 
other one utterance since the Golden Rule, and.' it will remain both 
ethically and commercially sound to the end of time. 

The old Europe is dead. So for that matter is all the old world, 
including America. We cannot hope and we need not desire to escape 
our sha?e in the process of reconstruction which is going on over all 
the world. Democracy has come in with a flood. The dam has broken 
and all the old channels are overflowed. It is a time of peril and_ of 
hope. We shall be sadly misguided if we conceal from our thinking 
either the hope or the peril. 

Democracy came to France in 1793 with fire and blood, and it did 
not remain. Democracy came to America in 1776, and is with us still. 
But it is almost a miracle that it survived in America. John Fiske 
affirms that the thirteen colonies could not have been held together in 
one nation had not the birth of the new republic synchronized with 
that of the steam engine. Just before the assembling of the first Conti- 
nental Congress, James Watt made his revolutionary discovery: and 
in 1787, two years before the Constitutional Convention, John Fitch 
launched his steamboat on the Delaware. Iron bands welded into some- 
thing approaching unity colonies as remote as Maine and Georgia, and 
ultimately made one nation of a territory that stretched across the con- 
tinent. He who supposes that democracy was domesticated in America 
by any automatic process may well read John Fiske's "The Critical 
Period in American History." The perils that followed the Revolu- 
tionary War were so many and so formidable, it appears from this 
distance that the survival of democracy in this, its home, was almost 
the result of a long series of fortunate accidents, rather than the legiti- 
mate product of prevenient wisdom. 



Mighty perils confronted our country also at the close of the War 
of the Rebellion. It is hardly too much to state that the war itself was 
less perilous to the permanent life and well being of the United States 
than the period of the Reconstruction. The South can remember the 
surrender of Lee without any very great bitterness, but how it feels 
about the events that followed that surrender we are taught in such 
spectacles as "The Birth of a Nation." It is an old and trite saying, 
that "Peace hath its victories as well as war." No one has ever dared 
put into a proverb the correlative truth that peace following war hath 
as terrible disasters as war itself, and that these have their peculiar 
peril to the victor. 

I am indebted to Thayer's Life of John Hay for a summary of the 
benefits and the evils that followed our Civil War. He enumerates 
three benefits and twice as many evils. Without attempting to follow 
his language or the precise order or content of his thought we may 
summarize these benefits and evils, as follows : 

The three benefits are : 

(1) The preservation of the Union, with its definition as one 
nation and not many. 

(2) The abolition of slavery 

(3) The prompt return of a million soldiers to civil life without 
peril either to our political structure or our industries ; thus establish- 
ing the pre-eminence of democracy over militarism and the ballot over 
the bayonet. 

The six evils are : 

(1) A bitter sectionalism, with lingering animosities, which half a 
century has scarcely eliminated. 

(2) A diminished respect of the citizen for the state. 

(3) The commutability of patriotism into pensions, and the 
menace of a class vote, known as the soldier vote. 

(4) The preferment of soldiers to civil offices for which many of 
them were quite unfit and for which their military experience afforded 
no assurance of preparation, so that appeal to a sham patriotism could 
be relied upon to outweigh solid merit. 

(5) The centralization of the power of the national government. 

(6) The beginning of the era of national extravagance. 

To these might be added the revelation of shameless profiteering, 
and the shocking disclosures such as we have known not merely in 
America, but as were revealed in Great Britain after the Boer War, 
and which are apparently inseparable from opportunities of expenditure 
vvhen vast sums must be collected and disbursed through financial and 
administrative machinery either extemporized for the emergency or 
devised for the more modest purposes of peace and wholly inadequate 
to the strain of war and the events vvhich follow. 



With such warning-s before us, we shall be most unwise if we 
suppose for a moment that the world's perils have passed with the 
signing of the armistice, or even that they will be over with the con- 
clusion of the treaty of peace. 

We are facing problems of our own, and problems which will come 
to us through our relation to other nations. Let us consider what some 
of these problems are. 

I. AMERICA'S OWN PROBLEMS. 

We have escaped from the war with so little of sacrifice compared 
with other nations, that we shall be in serious peril of supposing that 
we have no very large problems to face. That would be about th^ 
worst possible rnistake for us to make. Let us consider a few of the 
difficulties which immediately confront us. 

(1) The Problem of National Politics. 

If this had been a presidential year, Woodrow Wilson would prob- 
ably have been re-elected, even though his election involved a third term, 
which up to this time no American president has secured. It would 
hardly seem likely that he will be re-elected in 1920, and it is by no 
means certain that his party will find a man strong enough to succeed 
him. The country will feel under no obligation to elect Mr. Marshall 
or Mr. Bryan or Mr. McAdoo or any other Democrat in order to avert 
the possibility of discrediting our chief magistrate while the war is in 
progress, for the war is over. Even with that war in progress, the 
country felt entirely free to elect a Republican Congress, and that in 
the face of the President's own earnest and very unfortunate appeal. 
The problems of reconstruction in America are to go forward in the 
midst of the heated discussion of a national political campaign, in which 
a sweeping- change is well within the bounds of possibility. 

It is interesting to ask, On what principles will the next presi- 
dential election be won? President Wilson won his present seat at 
the last election on the slogan, "He kept us out of war." Manifestly 
he cannot win again, nor can his party, on that score ; nor will that be 
anything to be ashamed of. But is there anything which that party, or 
the party in opposition, can claim of positive excellence which will con- 
vince the voters two years from now of its right to control national 
alTairs during the formative years that are to follow the war? 

Neither of our great political parties now represents any defi- 
nite principle, or has represented it for twenty years. In 1891 James 
Bryce, our friendliest critic and one who understands us best, said in 
his "American Commonwealth," 

"Neither the Republican nor the Democratic party has anything definite to 
say on any of the twenty issues which one hears discussed in the country as seri- 
ously involved in its welfare. Neither party has any principles, any distinctive 
tenets. Both have traditions, both have certainly war cries, organizations, inter- 
ests enlisted in their support. But those interests are in the main the interests 
of getting and keeping the patronage of government. Points of political doctrine 
have all but vanished. All has been lost except office or the hope for it." 



That statement was true in 1891 ; it is more true today. Neither 
party issues a platform in which it does not make an honest effort to 
straddle every issue that can lose it any considerable group of votes. 
If either of the great parties will honestly think out a program for the 
future, a constructive, state-building program, and will incorporate in 
its platform a clear and honest declaration, of a policy to make our 
nation great and strong, that party will win the next election, and will 
deserve to win. 

(2) The Problem of National Finance. 

We are now able to state approximately what the war has cost 
America and the Allies. Up to November 1, 1918, it has cost the United 
States $19,541,000,000. Of this amount, $7,000,000,000 was loaned to 
the Allies. The amount expended by all the allied nations, including 
the United States, is approximately $180,000,000,000 to date. Higher 
figures than the foregoing are sometimes given of governmental appro- 
priations, but the above are furnished to me as the actual expenditures. 
I have no data that I count reliable of the expenditures of the Central 
Powers. 

These are huge sums; but we do not owe all of the $19,541,000,000 
which the United States has expended : for already we have paid a part 
of it in taxes. 

Our net national debt when the war began was approximated 
$1,000,000,000. It is now not far from $17,000,000,000. We owe approx'- 
imately $160 per capita as against Great Britain's $600 and France's 
$678. The interest on our national debt amounts to only about $6.50 
per annum per capita. If it were necessary to wipe out our entire 
indebtedness in a single year, we could do it by the drastic and unwar- 
rantable effort of devoting about one-third of our income to this purpose 
Our national wealth is supposed to be about $300,000,000,000; our debt 
is not far from 5% per cent of that. 

If we were to compare our resources and debt-paying capacity with 
our condition at the time of the Civil War, we should be starting with 
the necessity of raising $74,000,000,000 in four years, and that with 
Wall Street more than apathetic and Europe hostile. The resources of 
our banks in 1861 amounted to one and one-half billions. Yet within 
seven years after the Civil War ended we had paid off $4,000,000,000, 
being three-eighths of the entire cost of the war. The resources of our 
banks in 1917 totaled $37,000,000,000. which is almost twenty-five times 
their resources in 1861. Moreover, at the close of the Civil War the 
South was impoverished and the West undeveloped. Any comparison 
of our situation now and then, together with the history of our financial 
recovery from the Civil War must make it plain that America's financial 
condition is healthy and sound. There should be no financial panic. 

The case may be put even more strongly. Our annual savings 
in normal years prior to the war were between $5,000,000,000 and 
$6,000,000,000 annually; in 1917 they were nearly $14,000,000,000— some 
authorities say $15,000,000,000. Our savings which have been rising 
since 1914 from five to fourteen billions annually have been added to 



our national wealth. While our debt is about equal to 5% per cent of 
our wealth, our wealth itself has increased more than 5% per cent. We 
have probably made enoug^h money during the war to offset all our war 
costs and war losses and loans to the Allies. The war may really not 
have cost us a cent. 

Furthermore, as Ruskin so well pointed out, the value of a dollar 
in my pocket depends upon whether the man from whom I wish to 
purchase labor or commodities has a dollar of his own. If he has a 
dollar already, my dollar loses a large part of its purchasing power. 
Our losses as a nation are so small as compared with those of other 
nations that relatively our wealth has greatly increased. We have 
passed from the class of a debtor nation to that of a creditor nation 
within five years. 

In coming months we must face a considerable readjustment. There 
will be reaction and shrinkage of values, and ought to be ; but our 
bankers and capable men of affairs ought to be able easily to protect 
us against financial disaster. Our nation has a sound commercial basis. 
We have immense productivity and enormous national credit. We 
shall have to practice some economies, but the war has not impoverished 
America. Nothing but monumental folly can make us poor. 

(3) The Problem of the Democratization of Industry. 

We had learned before the war the secret of vast productivity. The 
war has taught us some things which we did not know before. We 
have learned that under stress of necessity our industry can be enor- 
mously speeded up, and though already productive can be made far 
more productive. But we have not yet learned the secret of equitable 
distribution of wealth. We need not delude ourselvs with the idea that 
industry is going to resume its former status. The government will 
have a mightily increased share in the ownership and management of 
industry, and the government as yet has no sufficient experience to 
justify the hope that this will be done without serious perils, but the 
situation does not end there. It will go farther, and with it will come 
imperative demands from other sources that industry itself shall be put 
on a more democratic basis. 

We shall face serious problems on account of the demoralization 
of some forms of production by reason of the war, and problems still 
more serious in the adjustment of wages to selling prices and market 
values ; but these when compared with what other countries must face, 
should not involve insuperable difficulties to America. 

Our industry has the special problems which come from greatly 
increased wages and from the introduction of women into many kinds 
of labor to which they have hitherto been strangers. This, however, 
should not precipitate any insoluble problems. We have our man 
power still undiminished, and an outlet for all its productive energy and 
our national wealth unimpaired. We shall have a legitimate place in the 
complex of our national industry for every kind of production which 
flourished here before the war, and for some others. 



(4) The Problem of Our Own Bolsheviki. 

This is a two-fold problem. We had it before the war in the 
alarming numbers and desperate devices of the I. W. W. There is 
more than a possibility of our meeting it in the immigration that is to 
follow the war. There is a third source of peril which is that of our 
own army. It is a dangerous thing to put a gun into the hands of 
almost any man. 

Mr. David R. Forgan sent to the ministers of Chicago for their use 
in pushing the Y. M. C. A. campaign today the following significant 
statement, which suggests a degree of apprehension lest our own sol- 
diers come back to us infected with the spirit of lawlessness: 

"Anarchy in its most violent forms has broken out all over Europe. Its ugly 
head was raised in Russia a year ago, and since then all the institutions of society 
in that land have fallen in a heap of utter ruin. In Germany and Austria the 
armies apparently are rapidly going over to the dark doctrines of Bolshevism. 
This poisonous growth seems at this moment to be finding a fertile soil in prac- 
tically all of the European countries. Even England apparently is not wholly 
free from its contamination. 

"From those who have studied the situation it seems to be clear that where 
the soul has been starved and all spiritual and moral sustenance taken away, 
populaces at large have given way to a pessimism and a sense of oppression 
which has caused them to place no value at all upon established social institu- 
tions. We have over in Europe at this moment in our own army over two million 
men, practically surrounded by these false prophets. It is generally taken for 
granted that the returned United States army will dominate American society for 
the next two decades. The leaders chosen by them may very likely be our 
political leaders, and the political and social thoughts that they advocate will in 
all probability be those accepted by the American people. What are those 
thoughts and ideas to be? Are they to be polluted with poison — the hate and 
the blackness of Bolshevism? Or are they to be kept free, pure and responsive 
to humanitarian and democratic doctrines? 

"During the long winter days and nights to come when our men will have 
practically nothing to do save policing the border lines of Germany and the bleak 
provinces of Russia, their minds must be occupied with healthy thoughts. If 
they are not given special and continued instructions in American ideals and 
concerning the benefits of American institutions, you may be sure that the bol- 
shevist will be able to find an insidious way of planting the seeds of his own 
theories. Bolshevism has flourished on oppression, homesickness and spiritual 
sterility. For our own sakes as well as for our soldiers we must provide the right 
means of keeping them happy and optimistic. We must see to it that their spir- 
itual, mental and moral needs are provided for by those who preach love and 
know how to spread sweetness and light. 

"It is the seven agencies represented by the United War Campaign that 
have been and are continuing to do this. If the people of America, and espe- 
cially of Chicago, will stand behind those agencies with sympathy and cash they 
will keep the vision of our soldiers and continue to instill in their minds the ideal- 
ism of America. Your dollars today may save us from Bolshevism tomorrow. 

"We ask you with all the emphasis at our command to present this thought 
to your congregation tomorrow and urge each member to give as liberally as 
possible to the campaign now under way." 

(5) The Problems of Private Ownership and Inheritance. 

Recent legislation, both state and national, has made good use of the 
discovery that the easiest and most popular source of money for the expense 
of government is to be found in the taxation of large incomes. While it 
is not at all certain that a graduated income tax is legal under the last three 
amendments of the Constitution, such taxation has been accepted as valid 
law, and there is no likelihood that it will end with the war. 



Besides this, however, there is certain to be an increasing demand for 
the aboHtion of all inheritance.* No government has ever admitted that the 
right of inheritance is a natural right. A man's right to the product of his 
own labor while he lives carries with it no certain right to direct the control 
or ownership of it after his death. Thoughtful books are now appearing, 
demanding that as hereditary titles are being abolished abroad, so hereditary- 
wealth shall be abolished at home. There will be increased protest against 
the idea that of two children, born in the same city on the same day, sub- 
ject to the same laws and supposedly heir to the same rights, one who hap- 
pens to be a descendant of Marshall Field shall inherit a great store and 
enormous property of the loop district of Chicago, while the other shall be 
doomed to struggle against almost hopeless disadvantages before he can 
fairly enter into life. 

II. AMERICA'S SHARE IN THE PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD. 

Beside these problems are those which America must face because of 
her share in the problems of the world. There never has been a time when 
she could have shut herself wholly away from them, and if there ever had 
been such a time it is now passed away forever. We shall have a minor 
share, but still a very considerable share, in the financial depression, the 
social chaos, and the political calamity through which the world will have 
to pass through clouds and thick darkness to the dawn of the new day. Even 
to enumerate these problems would now be next to impossible ; but if we 
cannot make a complete catalogue of them we can at least be assured of 
their general character and of the necessity that America will have to par- 
ticipate in the sacrifice which those problems involve. 

We shall have to assume a share, and it may not be a small or unim- 
portant share, of responsibility in the determination of the destiny of — 

a. The colonies which formerly belonged to Germany in Africa and 
the Pacific ; 

b. Internationalized waterways such as the Dardanelles ; 

c. Certain new or reborn nations which will now begin their perilous 
experiments with free government, such as Poland and perhaps Bulgaria, 
and very possibly Germany itself; 

d. Certain territories that have right to a name and a place on the 
map, but no present opportunity for self-government, including Armenia, 
oldest of Christian peoples, and especially related to America through mis- 
sionary institutions that have educated their future leaders ; aud Palestine, 
which must be rescued from the Turk, and presumably governed under the 
direction of an international protectorate for the preservation of interests 
very sacred to America and to the world. 

In alignment with her international colonial policy, America will have 
to formulate a colonial policy of her own. Our possession of Hawaii, of 
the Philippines, of the Panama Canal, our control of the West Indies and 
our Monroe Doctrine, all will call for a larger definition of our relation to 
peoples under our care and not yet fit for statehood. 



*See "The Abolition of Inheritance," by Harlan E. Reed. Macmillan, $1.50. 



Furthermore, we shall have to formulate a policy with regard to Mex- 
ico, and it should not continue to be one of watchful waiting. We have 
waited long enough. 

At the close of the Civil War we discovered, what we have had occasion 
to discover in the last four years, that we had immediate business with 
Mexico. We had a good sized army with its occupation gone, and we sent 
a portion of it into Mexico, hanged Maximillian and did a few other pic- 
turesque and necessary things, and made that part of the world for a time 
safe for democracy. 

We have business with Mexico again. It is a good time for Mr. Wil- 
son, commander in chief of our armies and navies, to ask from Mexico 
three pointed questions and to obtain completely satisfactory answers. 

First, why did Mexico refuse to permit us and the nations associated 
with us to buy oil even from wells owned by our own citizens when we 
needed the oil in our war for the welfare of the world? Was it because 
Mexico was filled with pro-Germans, whose hostility to the United States 
found governmental expression through this ungracious act? 

Secondly, What reason had Zimmermann to believe that his note would 
be welcome in Mexico suggesting that Mexico join with Germany in war 
against the United States? Is the United States to anticipate that in any 
time when it may be in trouble in matters relating to Europe, Mexico will be 
holding herself in sympathetic readiness to receive such communications? 

Thirdly, What assurance can the de facto government of Mexico now 
give to us that the conditions of anarchy which have led to loss of life and 
continual unrest along the Mexican border and have resulted in great loss 
to American investors in Mexico are completely at an end, so that no policy 
of watchful waiting will longer be required on our part? 

At the present moment we have something like four millions of vigor- 
ous young men, all dressed up and with no place to go. Before distributing 
them back among the farms and shops and offices, we could very well afford 
to let them get a little more wear out of their new uniforms, and Mexico is 
not an unpleasant place to spend the winter. We have no selfish designs 
upon Mexico, but we want to be assured that she regards her interests as 
identical with ours in all matters relating to world complications, and that 
the Monroe Doctrine works both coming and going. 

Those gentlemen in Washington who are soon to consider the modified 
uses of our army and navy may well consider the problem of the perma- 
nent pacification of Mexico, and her alignment with those policies to which 
the United States stands committed for her own safety and the welfare of 
the world. There will never be a better time to raise this issue and settle 
it permanently than just now. 

America must have her share in the coming league of nations that is 
to guarantee the peace of the world. So far as I know the suggestion of 
such a league came first from America ; certainly I think such a league 
could never be brought into existence without her, and would be doomed 
to fail if she were not a member of it. Virtually, such a league is already 
in existence ; for that was what we went into war for. But now we have 
the problem of organizing our national might into international efficiency to 
make the peace which has been won the durable possession of mankind. 



We must not fail to take account of the tremendous undertow of human 
life, and the inevitable reaction which follows every war. The failure to 
take this into account seems to me to have been the cause of many a disas- 
ter in the past, disaster more sad to contemplate because it grew directly 
out of military success and the failure to make that success permanent. 

Of historians of this generation none is more certainly to be classed 
as a progressive than Frederic Harrison. Yet there is no more notable 
passage in all his historical writings than that in which he calls attention to 
the conservative tension which accompanies all progress. Startling is the 
list he gives of changes that appeared at the time to have been permanent 
but which yielded to inevitable and often to swift reaction. Speaking of this 
conservative force, he says : 

"We are indeed able to transform it, to develop it, and to give it new life 
and action; but we can only do so as we understand it. Without this all efforts, 
reforms, and revolutions are in vain. A change is made, but a few years pass 
over, and all the old causes reappear. There was some unnoticed power which 
was not touched, and it returns in full force. Take, for instance, Cromwell and 
his Ironsides, who made the great English Revolution, swept away Monarchy, 
and Church, and Peers, and thought they were gone forever. Their great chief 
dead, the old system returned like a tide, and ended in the orgies of Charles and 
James. The Catholic Church has been, as it is supposed, staggering in its last 
agonies now for many centuries. Luther believed he had crushed it. Long 
before his time it seemed nothing but a lifeless mass of corruption. Pope after 
Pope has been driven into exile. Four or five times has the Church seemed 
utterly crushed. And yet here in this nineteenth century, it puts forth all its old 
pretensions, and covers its old territory. 

"In the great French Revolution it seemed, for once, that all extant institu- 
tions had been swept away. That devouring fire seemed to have burnt the 
growth of ages to the very root. Yet a few ages past, and all reappear — Mon- 
archy, Church, Peers, Jesuits, Empire, and Praetorian Guards. Again and 
again they are overthrown. Again and again they rise in greater pomp and 
pride. 

"The experience of everyone who has ever engaged in any public movement 
whatever reminds him that every step made in advance seems too often wrung 
back from him by some silent and unnoticed power; he has felt enthusiasm give 
way to despair and hopes become nothing but recollections. 

"What is this unseen power which seems to undo the best human efforts, as 
if it were some overbearing weight against which no man can long struggle? 
What is this ever-acting force which seems to revive the dead, to restore what 
we destroy, to renew forgotten watchwords, exploded fallacies, discredited doc- 
trines, and condemned institutions; against which enthusiasm, intellect, truth, 
high purpose and self-devotion seem to beat themselves to death in vain? It is 
the Past. It is the accumulated wills and works of all mankind around us and 
before us. It is civilization. It is that power which to understand is strength, 
which to repudiate is weakness. . . . Let us not delude ourselves into think- 
ing that new principles of policy or social action can be created by themselves or 
can reconstruct society about us." — "The Meaning of History," pp. 16-18, passim. 

It may well give us pause when we remember how often the world 
has believed itself to be ready for universal peace before and how narrowly 
it has missed of securing it. Why did not universal peace follow the fall 
of Napoleon? The answer is instructive. It shows that peace can be main- 
tained only by the attainment of a spirit of international good will. Peace 
is something more than the absence of war. The perils of peace are perils 
that menace both sides, but especially the side of the victor. 



The fall of Napoleon was brought about by the alliance of Great Britain, 
Austria, Prussia and Russia. These nations held that Napoleon was a world 
menace, and that there could be no neutrality. The world was practically 
invited to be present at the peace table, even France being represented, and 
far more effectively than any one supposed possible, by the astute Talleyrand. 
The Four nations, however, did not trust all the issues of the convention 
to the deliberations of the open meeting. As they had bound themselves by 
the treaty of Chaumont, March 10, 1814, to continue in the war and make 
no separate peace, so they made a secret treaty with respect to the terms of 
peace. 

Had the Four stood together, they would have been invincible; but 
they suspected each other's motives and all other nations had good reason 
to suspect theirs. England was represented by Lord Castlereagh, and 
Russia by its own emperor, Alexander, and these two thoroughly dis- 
trusted each other. Austria was represented by Metternich, and Prussia 
by Frederick William III, who was weak, and subordinate to Austria. 
Prussia was determined to gain, and did gain, territory on the Rhine, 
and Austria was determined to cripple Italy. England was determined 
not to let Russia gain dominion westward, and Russia was determined 
to get as far west as she could. So, with the battle of Waterloo still to 
be fought (June 18, 1815), and Napoleon still to be defeated, the powers 
that were to have saved the world from the evils of his dominion met at 
Vienna in the autumn of 1814, and signed their final treaty, inclusive, 
as was supposed, of all the earlier and separate treaties, on June 9, 
1815, nine days before the battle of Waterloo. 

But two outstanding events followed among the multitude of other 
and less significant events. The first was, that France, though defeated, 
improved through the diplomacy of Talleyrand, the opportunity created 
by the mutual distrust of Great Britain and Russia. France posed, and 
with some reason, as the representative of the smaller nations, and the 
defender of public rights. Talleyrand was astute enough, if not sincere 
enough, to see and set forth, the peril not only to France but to Spain 
and the Netherlands and the Balkans and Italy of the domination of 
Europe by the great Four. He won to his side not only these smaller 
nations but much of the public sentiment of Europe : and thus the 
defeated nation came to a new leadership. Europe knew that the Four 
great powers were all rapacious conquerors and not defenders of the 
liberties of Europe. 

Thus the Congress of Vienna that was to have settled the peace of 
the world sowed the seeds of subsequent war through the rapacity of 
the conquerors, and gave the future to the conquered. 

Then followed the so-called Holy Alliance of Austria, Prussia 
and Russia, supposedly an alliance for religious purposes, but 
soon appearing as an unholy conspiracy to defend at all hazards the 
power of absolute and irresponsible monarchy. It was a new lining 
up of the old Four, with Great Britain out; for Great Britain, while 
selfish as any of the countries involved, had these two considerations 
to attend to ; first, she was having a harder time than she expected with 
her American war of 1812; and in the second place. Great Britain had 



these two saving merits, that she stood for a limited as against an abso- 
lute monarchy, and that she was determined to secure if possible the 
ending of the slave trade. 

So the Congress of Vienna did not result in the securing to the 
world of a league to .compel peace, but resulted in the unholy compact 
of three autocracies in the Holy Alliance, and prepared the way for the 
Crimean War, the Franco-Prussian War, and the great World War of 
1914-1918. 

From such a collapse may God deliver us as we enter upon nego- 
tiations that may secure the durable peace of the world. I dare to hope 
that our own country will be a strong influence for constructive and 
righteous decision when the plenipotentiaries of the world powers meet 
next month at Versailles. We shall stand, thank God, for open cove- 
nants and against all secret treaties, and I believe that America's pres- 
ence in the Congress of Nations is the world's best guarantee of inter- 
national altruism and of lasting justice. 

America's greatest peril, as I see it, is that she may lose the noble 
spirit of idealism with which she entered the war, and suflfer from boast- 
fulness, materialism and the lust of power. Trade is coming to us. and 
we are glad of it, but we did not fight this war to secure trade. A large 
share of the little money which the w^orld has will flow to our already 
full coffers, but we did not fight this war to gain money but to give it. 
Our problem is to maintain in peace the idealism which carried us 
into war.* 

It is possible for us to be overtaken by the very spirit which we 
have been fighting; it is possible that we may send the Kaiser to St. 
Helena and his successor to Washington. As I read history, there is 
no more insidious danger than that the conqueror may be snared into 
accepting for himself the very evils which he has successfully resisted 
in his enemies and courageously overthrown. 

It is entirely possible that we should have gone out to defeat 
autocracy and that we should now come back autocratic. We may 
call our autocracy by another name ; we may call it efficiency or co-ordi- 
nation ; we may support it by all kinds of illustrious examples, as for 
instance, a reminder that we all worked at cross purposes until we 
submitted all the armies to the single command of Foch. But we shall 
then be demanding that we have a Foch in business and a Foch in 
religion and a Foch in politics. 

It is possible for us to go out in a war whose purpose is to end 
war but to come back war-like in spirit. It is possible to go out to put a 
stop to cruelty and to come back cruel. It is possible to become bar- 
barous in our conflict with barbarism ; in short, there is no danger more 
real than that we shall be defeated by our own victories. 



*This thought was more fully expressed in a sermon by Dr. Barton on the 
following Sunday evening on "Worshiping Our Captured Idols," from II Chron- 
icles, 25:14, in which it is recorded that the brave and righteous King Amaziah, 
returned from his conquest of Edom and became an idolator, worshiping the 
defeated idols which he had brought back as trophies of his military triumph. 



I have no words to express my admiration for the way our boys 
have fought. More than that, I believe that their spirit of sacrifice and 
heroism has faithfully reflected the soul of America. Entering into 
the war at a time when other nations that had suffered the loss of all 
things were bravely holding on at terrible cost, it has been given 
us to effect a decision in the world's contest. The world will not grudge 
us all the glory that we have justly earned, and we have earned it 
honestly. We shall not grudge to other nations the glory which is the 
due reward of their greater sacrifices. But now, can we match the 
heroism of the sons of America with a like idealism, or shall we with 
peace slump back into materialism? 

I am not oblivious to the grave dangers that confront the world 
in the present hour. It is more than possible that we are to witness 
much of sorrow and discomfort before peace shall bring to us its full 
fruition of blessing. But I thank God that I have lived to see this day, 
and that I am permitted to have a share in the rebuilding of the world. 
Rejoicing with every man who is to contribute to the productivity of 
the soil, the output of the factory, or to the stability of government or 
of the financial well-being of our country and the world, I rejoice in 
my own privilege in this day of upholding spiritual ideals, without which 
I believe the world could not have come thus far toward its salvation 
and without which we might even now be wellnigh unto despair. The 
world never had greater need of political wisdom, of commercial enter- 
prise, of financial judgment than now; but I believe that even greater 
is its need of faith and spiritual courage. That is why I am glad to be 
alive, and to be a preacher of the evangel of Jesus Christ in this day of 
the world's reconstruction. 

If it is a solemn thought that America must face perils with other 
nations, it is also an inspiring reflection that America has the privilege 
of leading the world through them into a share in her own freedom 
and prosperity. America with all her faults is at this moment the 
world's best hope. She represents more nearly than any other nation 
the ideal toward which the new republics of Europe, struggling pain- 
fully to their birth, are aspiring to possess. If democracy fails here it 
fails everywhere. If we can show the world that democracy is sane 
and safe and righteous, then by the blessing of God America has come 
to the kingdom for such a time as this. 



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